Guten Morgen

It's a peaceful, grey November morning, and best of all, it's Saturday. Today I didn't wake up to the sound of an alarm clock and I've been happily bumming around in bed streaming NPR. The familiar radio voices occasionally trigger an intense, but fleeting feeling of homesickness. In a burst I see vivid images of Austin and I wish I could get on the next plane going home.

But perhaps this suggests the wrong idea. I do miss Austin, but I'm not homesick. Since I arrived I knew that I'd want to stay for a while, so I've been trying my best to cultivate a sense of home here. It'd be pretty naive to say that Dresden already feels like home, but tja, it feels like something very close to that. With good people surrounding me, I've got a pretty cozy niche in this beautiful city. That feeling of being a confused outsider is rapidly fading away. Huzzah!

I thank the anonymous German bureaucrat who assigned me to the school I work at. Teaching there is a joy. Any stereotypes that you may have about Germans absolutely do not exist at the Freie Werkschule Meissen. Actually, it makes American schools seem irreconcilably uptight. Don't get me wrong, the school is not perfect, but it's kind of a magical place. As a teacher I have lots of freedom in lesson planning and I'm encouraged to be natural, if not goofy with the students. I teach high school classes most of the time and the students are so damn cool. They're like adults. Most of the teachers are young and hip and it's obvious that everyone loves their job. It's a wonderful place to be and I look forward to school each day.

The attitude of my school is drastically different from the schools I know in Austin and Plano. Back home most teachers feel obligated to put up this barrier with the students, believing it's the best (only?) way to gain authority and an air of professionalism. I'm seeing clearly that a teacher isn't any less effective by being authentic in the classroom. Refreshing!

Here are a couple of the students who contribute to a super-cute-fest each Wednesday, otherwise know as 1st grade English class. English is taught to them via play, song, and dance.

A view of the city of Meissen from the school playground

L8R G8RS!

Reunion + ze German tribal nation

This past weekend I was visited by favorite pair of Bavarians, Regina and Martin. Regina and I were paired for our high school exchange back in 2003 and we haven't seen each other since. Martin is her boyfriend, a friendly guy who rolls his r's and plays for a semi-pro volleyball team. His smart phone was a better tour guide of the city than I ever could have been. Ha!

The festivities began with some Breakfast Burritos and a good dosage of uncertainty, since being a hostess tends to be a worrisome endeavor for me. I think of Stav and how she felt before hosting her birthday party last month-- here she recreates the humor of it really well.

It was a rainy, gray weekend, what Germans call "museum weather". We did just that and spent the entire afternoon in the German Hygiene Museum (freaky name, brilliant museum). We had dinner in a "Potato Cellar" (another brilliant place with a freaky name). Perhaps it sounds creepy to eat a meal in basement? Here in Germany there's a whole market for cellars (that already sounds better) where you wine and dine and they tend to be very warm and cozy.

Regina, who lives in Munich, told me that the city recently decided to change the voice on public transportation to a Bavarian accent. This might rub most non-Bavarian Germans the wrong way, but I think it's amusing. I mean, what if the buses in Austin had a Texas accent?

This leads me to a fun fact about Germany: dear Ami friends, Germany is but a nation of tribes. There are so many dialects and regional clans. Germans are overwhelmingly, well, German, but the real diversity lies in all the little bubbles within Germany. For example, I live in the Dresden and Saxony bubbles. The Dresden bubble is quite distinct from the Leipzig bubble way on the other side of Saxony, or from the Görlitz bubble, which is only about 60 miles away.

Don't even get me started with bubbles outside Saxony.

Germany is half the size of Texas (and Saxony is the pinky fingernail) but I don't perceive this at all. This relatively small chunk of land is densely packed with different histories, identities, dialects, and landscapes. For an American, let alone a Texan, it's a tad surreal.

message from a student

its yust a soundtrack
and i understand not anything
but i what the lyriks are, everything!!!
=)

it is a joke for the movie
but i think the song shows us the situation of oure (the amercan) musik buissnis :
the woman should be very sexy and she should say horny thing an so on. ist a musikbuiniss fore stupid people. but the problem is that the most people are stupid. so you have to make this musik to become famous.... its so stupid
but its funny ^^

Ein abgefahrenes Halloween

As Halloween approached I pretty bummed that I couldn't be in Austin for a spectacularly weird weekend. Sure, I could have planned a Halloween party here in Dresden, but it would have been any other costume party. What is irreplaceable is how the whole city of Austin, with adults and kids alike, transforms itself into an eccentrically costumed Halloween wonderland for an entire weekend. It's so much more than the candy and sweets.

Unexpectedly, however, I did experience an utterly weird and fun Halloween... at the DINO PARK. The park dates back to the DDR and is situated in a foresty area outside the city. There are no flashy rides, sugary treats, neon advertisements, or mind-numbing children's music. (We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!) Instead, there are gigantic dinosaur sculptures and an elaborate series of wooden playgrounds where you can climb and swing like a monkey. And climb and swing I did! But the real icing on the cake was the erotic Neanderthal structures. Yes, really! You read it correctly. What can I say, it's never too early for sexual education in Germany.

Under entirely normal circumstances there are always uncontrollable fits of laughter with Micha and his family, so you can imagine how hilarious and unforgettable Halloween '10 was at the DINO PARK.

Proof!

Claire & Justus, a one-of-a-kind 3 year old Kunde (dude)

Typical

What's in there?

Not as cruel as it looks

Swinging!

Glorious Autumn

Exchanging jokes

The sculptures are really BIG

Codo: a new interpretation

Codo - Ich düse im Sauseschritt from Michael Klarfeld on Vimeo.

Epic song + film project at school + cheap beer + a friend who is even weirder than me and knows how to work with adobe premiere

Sunny Afternoon

Hallööööö liebe Kunden,

IT'S A SUNNY DAY. I'd be a fool to stay indoors for too long on a day like this. My sunny days are, like, numbered as November nears......

I'm wrapping up my 2-week fall break and on Tuesday I'm going to start teaching 4realz. I took trips to Berlin, Kiel & Flensburg. The latter two northernly cities are 30 minutes apart, but Germans consider the difference to be profound. Actually they're right.

Berlin is wild! There's Germany and there's Berlin. It's super international, very funky, and the scene is constantly changing. In spirit, it's like a cosmopolitan version of Austin. Since it's only 2 hours away and I know plenty of people living there, I'd like to visit fairly often. I'm very glad that I live in Dresden though-- in Berlin it would be hard to meet German people, oddly enough.

In Kiel and Flensburg I was reunited with Frederike & her family & her spectactular friends. We had a MUSTACHE PARTY and I got reacquainted with Fernet Branca y Coca, which is what people drink in Argentina. Listen, I think it's stupid to talk about drinking, but I'm going to make a brief exception: Fernet is something else. It's actually nice on your stomach and you'll have an opposite-hangover the next day. It is, however, an "acquired taste". (OK I'm done now)

Another memorable part of the trip occurred at the grocery store. I was buying said drink and some old man started pushing his shopping cart against me (instead of asking me to kindly move or going around me). Then after I grumbled some insults, he took out his knife and starting sharpening it. Fuckin weirdo.

In a little bit I will go to a "Hochseilgarten" with my housemates. It's tough to describe. It's a place where you climb shit and are connected to ropes, but it's not rock climbing. It's like an obstacle course high up in the trees!

That's all for now, folks. L8R!

And check out this sweet Chilean music playlist that NPR compiled.

My German face

Exhibit A: I'm posting this picture for a few reasons...

1) You can see my kitchen at my new apartment.

2) Tall boots and a trench coat? But it's only September 18th!

3) However the main reason I took this was to show you a unique phenomenon which I call the "German face." This is the preferred expression of many Germans in public settings, like when walking around the city or waiting for the train. You have to look like you're contemplating your mortality or something. No smiling.

Exhibit B: another girl on my program took this concept to new heights. I can't look at this without erupting into laughter.

I've been living in Dresden for about 10 days now and I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm excited to discover more of it. :-)

PS: Another hilarious factoid is that I hear "It's Raining Men" on the radio at least once a day!